MLB delayed World Series, McCain moved NFL kickoff

Anyone who’s really been watching the 2008 World Series will know that the paid half-hour infomercial for Barack Obama isn’t really affecting the telecast of the series drastically.

“No one will delay the World Series game with an infomercial when I’m president,” Republican presidential nominee John McCain said at a rally Tuesday in Hershey, Pa., claiming the Democratic nominee’s ad would delay the game by 15 minutes.

Obama’s campaign bought the 30 minutes of airtime on CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, Univision, BET and TV One with all seven networks scheduled to air the program simultaneously at 7 p.m. Central time Wednesday.

Regular viewers tuning into FOX know that the game doesn’t start at 7 p.m. The telecasts begin at 7 p.m. but all of the first pitches have started almost 30 minutes later because of pregame activities.

The pregame show normally introduces viewers to the studio show hosts, game announcers, followed by brief analysis, player lineups and the singing of the National Anthem take up the first half-hour.

FOX account executive Joe Coppola told Politico.com “Our first pitch for the World Series is usually around 8:30 (Eastern) anyway, so we didn’t push back the game. It was really just about suspending the pregame, you know, Joe Buck. That’s all we did.”

For the record, Game 1’s first pitch was a 7:35 p.m. start, Game 2 was at 7:29 p.m., Game 3 was 7:35 p.m. and Game 4 was at 7:29 p.m.

Wednesday’s game was already pushed back by Major League Baseball for a 7:35 p.m. start for a possible Game 6. Because of weather delays, instead of a Game 6 it’s now the completion of Monday’s Game 5 – weather permitting – that’s tied 2-2 in the bottom of the sixth inning.

For the record, the Republican Party was responsible for the time change of the NFL’s Sept. 4 Washington-New York Giants Kickoff Weekend game.

The game was started 90 minutes earlier (6 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m.) from the usual season opener start time due to the Republican National Convention coverage on NBC.

Sept. 4 was the night McCain gave his acceptance speech as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.